The Washington Post
Florida’s Panhandle coast devastated by historic Hurricane Michael
Entire oceanfront communities in the Florida Panhandle were virtually obliterated, an Air Force base suffered “catastrophic” damage and at least six people were killed by Hurricane Michael, a sucker-punch of a storm that intensified suddenly and now ranks as one of the four most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the United States.
“This one just looks like a bomb dropped,” said Clyde Cain, who is with the Louisiana Cajun Navy, a group of volunteer search-and-rescue teams that went to Florida to help in Michael’s wake, just as they did last month during Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas.
Michael was downgraded to a tropical storm Thursday as it sped its way northeast through Georgia and the Carolinas on a path out into the Atlantic Ocean. But its relatively short assault on Florida’s Gulf Coast was devastating.
Turks tell U.S. officials they have audio and video recordings that support conclusion Khashoggi was killed
The Turkish government has told U.S. officials that it has audio and video recordings that prove Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul this month, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.
The recordings show that a Saudi security team detained Khashoggi in the consulate after he walked in Oct. 2 to obtain an official document before his upcoming wedding, then killed him and dismembered his body, the officials said.
The audio recording in particular provides some of the most persuasive and gruesome evidence that the Saudi team is responsible for Khashoggi’s death, the officials said.
Few countries are meeting the Paris climate goals. Here are the ones that are.
This week, a top scientific body studying climate change released a terrifying report. The world has just a decade to take “unprecedented” action to cut carbon emissions and hold global warming to a moderate — but still dangerous and disruptive — level. That would require a “rapid and far-reaching” transformation of the world’s economy, one of such scale and magnitude that it has no historical equivalent.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that nearly every country will need to significantly scale up the commitments made under the 2015 Paris climate accord if humans hope to avoid disaster. Under that agreement, 195 countries pledged to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions to try to keep global warming under two degrees Celsius.
But it’s hard to imagine that will happen, as almost no country is doing a good job meeting the relatively modest goals in place.
The Guardian
Hellfire: this is what our future looks like under climate change Hellfire: this is what our future looks like under climate change
The worst case scenario plays out the same way everywhere, whether you are in southern California or northern Alberta. A nascent wildfire – driven by extreme heat, high winds, drought conditions and a century of largely successful fire suppression – explodes into a juggernaut and takes over the countryside.
Any houses in the way are simply more fuel. Preheated to 932F by the 100ft flames of the advancing blaze, homes don’t so much catch on fire as explode into flames. In a dense neighborhood, many homes may do this simultaneously. The speed of ignition shocks people – citizens and firefighters alike – but it is only the beginning.
Because the temperatures achievable in an urban wildfire are comparable to those in a crucible, virtually everything is consumed as fuel. What doesn’t burn, melts: steel car chassis warp and bend while lesser metals – aluminum engine blocks, magnesium wheels – will liquify.
Trump announces Jamal Khashoggi investigation but says he won't halt Saudi arms sales
Donald Trump has said US investigators are looking into how Jamal Khashoggi vanished at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, but made clear that whatever the outcome, the US would not forgo lucrative arms deals with Riyadh.
The president’s announcement raised concerns of a cover-up of evidence implicating Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in plans to silence the dissident journalist. Those fears were also heightened by an announcement that the Turkish and Saudi governments would conduct a joint investigation into the case.
The Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV network described the 15 suspects as “tourists” who had traveled to Istanbul by commercial plane.
The Los Angeles Times
California senators will try to block White House judicial nominees for the 9th Circuit
Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris complained Thursday that they did not sign off on three White House nominees for open California seats on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and said they would oppose their confirmation in the Senate.
Trump announced Wednesday evening he had nominated Assistant U.S. Atty. for the Southern District of California Patrick J. Bumatay, Los Angeles appellate attorney Daniel P. Collins and Los Angeles litigator Kenneth Kiyul Lee for California-based vacancies.
Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she and the administration were still trying to reach a consensus on nominees when the White House abruptly announced them.
Trump's complaint that the Federal Reserve was 'going loco' on interest rates is just plain crazy, analysts said
The stock market tumbled Thursday for a second-straight session — a combined loss of nearly 1,400 points by the Dow Jones industrial average — and… Trump has been quick to finger the culprit: The Federal Reserve, headed by his handpicked chairman, Jerome H. Powell.
“We have interest rates going up at a clip that’s much faster than certainly a lot of people including myself would have anticipated,” Trump told reporters Thursday, continuing the rare presidential criticism he started this summer of the independent central bank.
“I think the Fed is out of control. I think what they’re doing is wrong,” he said. On Wednesday, Trump was more pointed, saying the Fed “has gone crazy,” is “going loco” — and he’s “not happy about it.”
Melania Trump says she might be ‘the most bullied person'
First Lady Melania Trump said she could be “the most bullied person” in the world.
She made the remark during a television interview in which she promoted her Be Best initiatives, which tackles online bullying. Critics have pointed out that her husband, President Trump, routinely rips people for their looks, and what he says is a lack of talent or intelligence.
“I could say I'm the most bullied person in the world,” Melania Trump said in the ABC News interview, broadcast Thursday on “Good Morning America.”
Reuters
China's September trade surplus with U.S. widens to record $34.13 billion
China’s trade surplus with the United States surged to a record high of $34.13 billion in September, compared with $31.05 billion in August, Chinese customs data showed on Friday.
The September surplus with the U.S. was larger than China’s overall trade surplus of $31.69 billion for the month.
For January-September, China’s trade surplus with the United States was $225.79 billion, compared with about $196.01 billion in the same period last year.
Brexit negotiators eye Monday breakthrough, Northern Irish party ups the ante
British and EU negotiators making headway on the Irish border hope for a Brexit deal breakthrough on Monday, diplomats said, though the British prime minister’s Northern Ireland ally has stoked uncertainty by warning it could vote against her.'
Under pressure from all sides, Theresa May told journalists at Downing Street reception that talks on the key issue of the Irish border were likely to continue until November, while cabinet ministers who met with May on Thursday evening were cited by the Financial Times as saying the border issue was close to being settled.
However, the Brexit spokesman of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), May’s parliamentary partner, said the DUP’s 10 members of parliament would vote against the UK budget and consider voting no-confidence in May if the British government breaks the DUP’s red lines in Brexit talks.
Deutsche Welle
NASA: ISS crew make emergency landing after booster failure
An American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut aborted their flight to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday after a booster failure on the Soyuz spacecraft.
"The Soyuz capsule is returning to Earth via a ballistic descent, which is a sharper angle of landing compared to normal," said NASA mission control in Houston.
During their plunge to the surface, the two-man crew was forced to endure 6.7 times the force of gravity, according to Russian controllers.
Rookie astronaut Nick Hague and veteran cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin "have been in contact with rescue forces," NASA said.
Bloomberg
Stock Slump Shows Signs of Easing, U.S. Futures Up: Markets Wrap
The biggest sell-off in global stocks since February showed signs of easing up on Friday, with some Asian equity markets showing gains and U.S. stock futures climbing. U.S. Treasury yields ticked higher.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index edged up from the lowest level since May 2017, with gains in South Korea contrasting with a further retreat in Tokyo. Benchmarks in Sydney and Hong Kong fluctuated. The Shanghai Composite was down, heading to a fresh four-year low. The yuan retreated, and was the worst performing currency in Asia Friday after a weaker-than-forecast daily fixing. That followed a Bloomberg report that U.S. Treasury staff concluded that China isn’t manipulating its exchange rate…
Investors ascribed a number of reasons for the retreat in equities this week, including worries over the U.S.-China trade war and increasing preoccupation with the risk the American economy is nearing the end of an extraordinarily prolonged expansion. Remarks by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell last week that the central bank is “a long way” from a neutral level of interest rates also fed into sentiment.
U.S. Treasury Staff Finds China Isn’t Manipulating Yuan, Sources Say
The U.S. Treasury Department’s staff has advised Secretary Steven Mnuchin that China isn’t manipulating the yuan as the Trump administration prepares to issue a closely watched report on foreign currencies, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The conclusion, if accepted by Mnuchin, would avert an escalation of the U.S.-China trade war and remove a source of anxiety for emerging markets. Mnuchin could issue a different finding...
Trump has publicly and privately pressured Mnuchin to declare China a currency manipulator, but Treasury staff haven’t found grounds to do so, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Formally accusing China of manipulating the renminbi wouldn’t trigger any sanctions or retribution, but the move would heighten tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
Ars Technica
DOJ approves $69B CVS-Aetna merger as healthcare industry restructures
The Department of Justice on Wednesday approved a $69 billion merger between prescription-drug behemoth CVS and insurance giant Aetna, with some strings attached.
The massive merger is just the latest grand-scale restructuring of the health care industry, which is under pressure to rein in unwieldy costs while facing competitive threats from tech giants, such as Amazon, joining the fray.
CVS, which racked up about $185 billion in revenue last year, runs the country’s largest retail-pharmacy chain and provides prescription plans to more than 94 million customers. By joining forces with Aetna—the nation’s third-largest health-insurance provider with over 22 million medical members, earning $60 billion in revenue in 2017—CVS will have a tight grasp on the market. The combined enterprise aims to be a first-line health care hub with clinics in its ubiquitous brick-and-mortar stores.
Senators to Google: Why didn’t you disclose Google+ vulnerability sooner?
Three United States senators have demanded that Google provide answers about its recent disclosureof a security breach in its Google+ social network that led to its closure. Google only came forward after the Wall Street Journal broke the story on October 8.
So far, one federal proposed class-action lawsuit has been filed in the wake of the episode.
In a Thursday letter sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) have asked a number of pointed questions of the tech giant.
We’ve seen more fast radio bursts, but we still don’t know what they are
Some of science's biggest mysteries are in outer space. The identity of dark matter and dark energy involve fundamental questions about how the Universe is constructed. If you instead are interested in mysteries about what the Universe is doing, then fast radio bursts may be at the top of the enigma list.
They are, as their name suggests, fast, lasting for only a handful of milliseconds. And they also involve huge quantities of energy at radio wavelengths, just as promised. But beyond that, we know almost nothing about them, and we have only observed about 35 of them as of last count. Their rarity and transient nature have helped keep them from being better understood.
But this week's edition of Nature includes a collection of 20 new observations, all occurring since the start of 2017. Unfortunately, the new bursts don't tell us much about how they're generated. And, to make matters worse, they suggest that our best bet for figuring it out—the only repeating burst source we know about—is probably unlike all the other sources we're seeing.